UN Filing on Missing Children

NABS is working with the IITC and NARF to file a submission with the UN to call on the United States to provide a full accounting of American Indian and Alaska Native children who were taken into government custody under the U.S. Boarding School Policy and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

Human Rights

“Indigenous peoples and individuals have the right not to be subjected to forced assimilation or destruction of their culture” –Article 8, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP)

Definition of Genocide according to Article 2 of the UN Geneva Convention, 1948:

A mental element: the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"; and

A physical element, which includes the following five acts, enumerated exhaustively:

Killing members of the group

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Tribes Call for Testimony on Children Who Went Missing at Boarding Schools

Respectful greetings to all Tribal Nations and allies.

The Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS) is working with the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) and the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) to file a submission with the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances (UNWGEID) to call on the United States to provide a full accounting of American Indian and Alaska Native children who were taken into government custodyunder the U.S. Boarding School Policy and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown.

On June 15, 2017, at its Mid-Year Conference in Connecticut, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) adopted Resolution MOH-17-014, sponsored by the Chickasaw Nation, encouraging Tribal Nations, families, and descendants to provide information on children who never returned home from Indian Boarding Schools. Read the Press Release about the NCAI Resolution and call for testimony.

NABS, IITC, NARF, and NCAI respectfully request that families and Tribes gather testimony and share information, where appropriate, for the UN Filing

In addition, please help us reach out to families and relatives who may have specific information or testimonies they are willing to share about family and Tribal members who attended boarding schools, but remain unaccounted for or are still missing which could be included in a submission to the UNWGEID calling on the United States government to provide this information to the families and Tribes of those individuals.

Please help us spread the word with those who might have information about the children who went missing at boarding schools. The time for healing is now.

How You Can Help

Share the call for testimony with Tribal communities and on social media

Talk with your relatives and ask if anyone in your family went missing at Boarding Schools